Saturday, December 09, 2006

Wicked in Justice Society

The set-up: DC's new Justice Society of America has just launched with issue #1 out this week. As is usual with the first issue of a team book, the group is forming, and older members of the team are out gathering recruits, who we get to see in their daily lives before they are approached. One of the new characters in this book is Maxine Hunkel, granddaughter of the great Ma Hunkel (the original Red Tornado). Why on earth is this of interest to Oz fans? Because of Maxine's interests:

This is one of several scenes that establish Maxine as an opinionated motor-mouth who is having trouble being accepted by her classmates at Harvard. She's smart, but talky. A few panels later we see her on the top of a building, and she utters a familiar line:

"It's time to try... Defying Gravity." Yup, she steps off the building. And while the book fools us for a moment into thinking she's going to fall... well, hey, that would be telling now, wouldn't it? Perhaps you ought to go buy the issue if you want to know what happens next.